Skip to main content

stephen king - Is this a real quote from the Dark Tower series?


I found this line (attributed to Jake Chambers, and referring to the rest of his Ka-tet) in Bev Vincent's analysis The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus:



“I love them, but I hope I die before it gets me so bad it stops making any difference if the ones against me deserve [to die] or not.”



I've tried to find this passage in the books themselves (checking every instance of the word "love" in those books in which Jake appears) and on Google, with no success.


Does this passage actually appear in The Dark Tower series, and if so, where?



Answer





I contacted Bev Vincent, author of The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus. Here's what he had to say:



Jonah:


When I was writing The Road to the Dark Tower, I was working from the first draft manuscripts of the final three books. I received later drafts of books 5 and 6 in time to incorporate any corrections or changes King made to the quotes I had pulled from them, but I did not have the opportunity to see the revised MS of the final book before my book went to press. So there are several quotes from The Dark Tower in my book that do not reflect what was finally published. I’m pretty sure that’s the case here.


Bev



So Vincent suggests that this quote was from a pre-publication manuscript of The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. This seems most probable to me, since the quote is sufficiently dissimilar to any existing one to be misremembered, and Vincent probably wouldn't fabricate it.


This makes sense in the apparent context of the quote. Jake has just killed several people, but he spares the dish-washer Jochabim.




“North of there, if you do like it or if you don’t,” said the washerboy. “Will’ee kill me, lad? I don’t want to die, sad as I am.”


“I won’t be the one to kill you if you tell me the truth. Did a woman come through here?”


The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower



According to Vincent in The Road to the Dark Tower, his thoughts are that Roland, Eddie, and Susannah would have killed him without a second thought, thus prompting the quote:



“I love them [Roland etc.], but I hope I die before it gets me so bad it stops making any difference if the ones against me deserve [to die] or not.”



Certainly Jake seems a kinder character than Roland, so it seems likely this might have occurred in one of King's earlier drafts.


The quote is probably from the initial draft of The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.
Post a Comment
Read more

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...
Post a Comment
Read more